Posted
by
Soulskillon Tuesday April 16, 2013 @06:41PM
from the because-centralized-databases-are-always-a-good-idea dept.

dcblogs writes "The U.S. Senate comprehensive immigration bill, due Tuesday, will allow the H-1B cap to rise from 65,000 to as high as 180,000. The bill, overall, contains some interesting provisions. It will require the U.S. Labor Dept. to create a website of H-1B job openings that employers must post to. The jobs must be posted least 30 calendar days before hiring an H-1B applicant to fill that position. The bill also raises wages for H-1B workers to make them more competitive, although the amount wasn't specified. One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce. The provision may prompt India firms to buy U.S. companies to expand their U.S. presence."

Corporate America's solution to unemployment is importing cheaper labor from other countries. I watched mouth agape as Bill Gates suggested this in an interview when asked about his ideas on how to deal with the Recession. Of course, corporate media never challenges their masters when they make these ludicrous statements.

If $large mega corp$ feels it is in their best interest to outsource jobs in this "global economy" why are our DVD's still region coded?Please dont give me the "top releases are sent to the US first"... I think the real reason is to prevent re-importation.

This "one way street" stuff needs to end. Either we have a global economy and you should charge $4 for a DVD and $10 for a school text book (same they often charge other regions) or we dont

If you've got at least $1B, or regularly appear before bobbing heads on the news, you could say that 2+2=5 and have your views solemnly acknowledged and endorsed by the Very Serious People who discuss these issues.

So...their idea of dealing with a need for more homegrown STEM candidates (haha, try raising the salary offers a little) is to shoot a nuclear torpedo into their home country's universities' STEM programs? Increasing supply tapers off demand...duh! That's like basic economics...it'll perma-fuck anything at home...it takes like a decade to establish a CS / SE program, let alone the other kinds...less kids attending those programs because of dropping salaries (this includes kids who drop out of the program or

Immigration reform advocates talk a good game of human rights and crap like that but what the really want is cheap labor to mop their office floors and pick their vegetables.

Bottom line is there are plenty of American Citizens that are willing to work all jobs. Anyone who says otherwise is actually saying that that there are Americans who won't work for less than minimum wage (Agricultural) so we should bring in these poor schmucks from other countries to d

I think this is really the break point for the bigger guys like IBM. That's why it's discussed now.

The horse is long out if the barn. For companies like IBM they have moved "outsourcing" in India to being just like an office across the country. IBM has basically bet the company on US sales forces selling Indian labor. You get a "US contact" for the first few months, but all the work is done by Indians.

I guess if you can admin your server room from your bed at 3am (and still work at 8am) your company can just pay an Indian guy to be awake at 3am and don't need you. The REAL money is in Project Management... Which quite ironically is not part of the MBA track-- to BUILD NEW THINGS? Of course Project Management is the skill of making yourself replaceable.. So the fact IT has embraced it is really going to bite us in the ass.

For cultural reasons, Americans aren't willing to sanction unlimited immigration. So there is going to be some limit. How to allocate it? Currently it's first-come, first-serve. But why not allocate it by economic benefit? And how better to measure economic benefit than wages?

If one company claims there is a shortage of domestic workers, and offers $60k to hire a foreign worker; a 2nd company claims the same and offers $90k; and a third claims the same and offers $120k; which should get the slot? I would ar

I honestly do not know what to make of this. I have just done my state and federal tax. I owed the feds nothing. I owed the state $57. I do contract engineering work in things like analog and microprocessor control.

I have been working with one small company trying to build it up. I have been working there for six months now, and have been paid a little over $2000. Just yesterday the owner gave me an agreement (NDA) he wanted me to sign, which transferred any and all IP I come with to the company alo

"Just yesterday the owner gave me an agreement (NDA) he wanted me to sign, which transferred any and all IP I come with to the company along with a commitment from me I will not work for any of his customers or competitors for 24 months after termination."

I don't have a big problem with NDA, except I would want a provision to keep something for my professional portfolio.

By the way: if it transfers all "IP" (I hate that term because it's grossly inaccurate) it's far more than just an NDA. A plain NDA is just "non disclosure", it has nothing to do with actual ownership.

The document you were asked to sign was actually a combination of 3 agreements: a NDA, an agreement about copyright or patent, and a non-compete agreement. Generally, these will be separat

Currently it's not "first-come-first-served". It's a lottery - literally. This year USCIS received more applications than the statutory cap in the first week, so they held a lottery to select the applications for further review. That's so unbelievably fucked up...

H1B is already all about out-sourcing. The top 10 H1B employers, accounting for roughly half of all H1B visas, are out-sourcers. They bring people in on H1B, train them up and send them back. H1B is encouraging out-sourcing, not stopping it.

Not only that, but studies have shown that the companies' excuse that H1-B workers are "the best and brightest" is nothing but hogwash. On average, they do not perform up to the level of the average Americans in the same positions.

Then why are Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, etc. located in the US? Software writing can be done anywhere in the world.

Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, etc. are located here because they were founded here, and for all their talk of the joys of globalization, the founders and C-level execs don't want to emigrate to India. The real question is why do they write software here.

"Software writing" is not always something that can be done as well anywhere in the world. It's not like putting bolt A into hole B 400x per hour, where the task is repetitive and well defined. It's often important for people to understand what it's being used

"Why do you think they write software here? Do you disagree that programmers are cheaper elsewhere?"

They write software here because there are better programmers here. It is that simple.

I've had this conversation many times on Slashdot. Over the last year and a half or so, I have seen a pretty drastic pull back in offshoring of software. On the international job boards I have seen more and more ads for "North America and Western Europe ONLY".

The reason is that the "cheap offshoring" has turned out to be not so cheap. The most common complaints have been very poor quality and late- or non-delivery.

What we need to understand is that some jobs can be exported and some can't. If the job can be exported, it makes sense to bring the foreign worker here where he'll earn an American wage and compete with Americans on an equal footing. It will lower the wage here of course, but not as much as exporting the job to the foreign country would do. Anyone know how much it costs to ship a piece of software from a factory in Poland to America?

They essentially have two options here. One is to import people that are actually skilled enough to do the work, since the US education system doesn't seem to provide them but focuses on burger flippers and waitresses instead. The other option is to let the companies either offshore the work completely, or go bankrupt because some foreign company comes up with a competing product and takes over the market. The short term solution is to import people, the long term solution is to put government money in educ

Well we should be trying to get these people to come here and stay instead of cross training them, and sending them back so the previous employers can just pay them their foreign offshore rates.

Better yet, just eliminate the program completely. The US did fine for years as a tech leader without it. There has never been any justification for it, and with the current job market there's even less.

The whole H1B idea has been perverted by greedy companies looking for cheap and obedient labor so much that it should be cancelled. There is already O-1 visa for "Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement" that is intended for geniuses that can be hard to find in the U.S. Any other needs can and should be filled within the country.

The companies using H1-B's are scoundrels that post impossible qualifications, whine to congress about how expensive it is to hire decent talent, and then mop up H1-B's in their place and probably not even screen them anyway.

Instead of giving people H1B visas, why don't we just give them green cards, so they have the same employment bargaining rights that US citizens have so it becomes impossible to undercut local wages. Also, for student visa holders who finish school here with MS or PhD degrees we should just grant citizenship for an upfront fee of $8000 so we keep talented people in the US.

Instead of giving people H1B visas, why don't we just give them green cards, so they have the same employment bargaining rights that US citizens have so it becomes impossible to undercut local wages.

I think you answered your own question:)
In that case H1B visa holders would not be cheaper and who's going to hire them? A very large majority of H1B holders are brought in as cheaper labor and a tiny minority are hired as "unavailable talent".

Ph D in STEM can already do that. Science Tech Engg and Math grads can jus apply for green card based on their degree. No employer sponsorship is needed. No offer of employment is needed. They already have full bargaining power.

STEM Masters get an additional 15 months of post completion practical training on top of 12 months of practical training period of other fields, They can work legally for any employer for 27 months. Then the employer has to sponsor them for Green card. The masters come in EB2 categ

Thank heavens for that, because almost half of the STEM Ph.D.'s in this country have jobs that justify their degrees. Anything else and we might actually see their pay rising! When that happened back in the 1980's the NSF wisely suggested a vast increase in student visas (with the express and stated purpose of driving down salaries).

Ph D in STEM can already do that. Science Tech Engg and Math grads can jus apply for green card based on their degree. No employer sponsorship is needed. No offer of employment is needed. They already have full bargaining power.

No offense, but I believe you are just making shit up. Do you care to cite a reference? A number of my friends got a PhD and all they get is OPT which is good for 12 months and requires a (relevant) employment offer to match it those 12 months. My roommate is out of US now, because he had no way of staying here after graduating with a PhD.

You cannot apply for green card based on your PhD degree (unless you come from the parallel universe where common sense prevailed -- as that would be a great idea to allo

No offense, but I believe you are just making shit up. Do you care to cite a reference? A number of my friends got a PhD and all they get is OPT which is good for 12 months and requires a (relevant) employment offer to match it those 12 months. My roommate is out of US now, because he had no way of staying here after graduating with a PhD.

You cannot apply for green card based on your PhD degree (unless you come from the parallel universe where common sense prevailed -- as that would be a great idea to allow this).

However, the process is hard - the OP made it sound easier than it is. You need to show that you are an extraordinary asset, with skills that are of national merit. You need several reference letters, a lot of top-notch publications (I have heard that you need more than most faculty positions require), and having contacts helps a lot (say, you had a famous advisor with lots of contacts during your Ph.D.).

The annual allocation of EB-1 visas is approximately 40,000. In FY 2009, approximately 40 percent of allotted EB-1s went to workers and approximately 60 percent went to spouses and children. EB visas also have a country limit of 7% per country (~2800), so China and India fill these up quickly.

EB1 has not traditionally had a long backlog, but now it does. In FY 2013, there were 48,639 valid EB-1 applications, and the pipeline is getting more full.

I remember a few months ago the Republicans were offering a bill to make it easy for foreigners to earn PhDs from American universities to stay. To keep it from affecting overall immigration levels the bill would have cut the number of other people allowed in by the same number.

The more people available to do a job, the less that job can pay, as any one candidate is now competing with a larger number of other candidates for the same job.

I'm honestly much less worried about low-paying jobs being filled by immigrant or migrant workers than I am about high-paying jobs. Low-paying jobs have an artificial floor for how much they can be paid, in the form of the Federal Minimum Wage, even for jobs that arguably aren't worth that mi

The more people available to do a job, the less that job can pay, as any one candidate is now competing with a larger number of other candidates for the same job.

When you add more people to the system in general, they don't only take up a job, they also create new jobs by spending the money they earn on goods and services that they need. Were that not the case, all countries would have faced rapid increases in unemployment as their population grew by natural means.

I've been in IT for 15 years and never have I seen a more anti-American approach to hiring than the H-1B visa debacle. I've seen firms literally taken over by foreigners and every American basically leave because it became uncomfortable to work there.

The law should be hire Americans first. If no one in the city or state can be found, create a jobs database like the one proposed and people in other states can apply. Once the company has shown they cannot find a qualified applicant in CONUS, Hawaii, Alaska, P

It is illegal to pad the requirements or to tailor it for a pre selected individual. But the companies don't ask for general things like degree in computational physics or chemical engineering. It is always, "Masters in Aerospace engg or equivalent + C++ and/or Java + computational fluid dynamics + navier stokes equation + k-epsilon turbuence modeling + unstructured tetrahedral mesh + time marching" At this point, people who know know it is a tailored requirement. But the dept of labor bureaucrat does not k

We have been denigrating, insulting and making fun of civil servants for some 30 years now.

30 years? More like forever. I don't think that's the problem. TPTB make sure that government employees turn a blind eye to this. Any attempt to seriously cut through this garbage would lead to some very nasty phone calls from some very generous "campaign contributors".

Disagree all you wish. We have gave the farm away. All of these people come over here, work for American companies, go home, start companies, and then compete with American companies. It happens all the time.

OK, I disagree. I'd like to see you name a big non-American tech company that was started by a former H-1B holder.

I'm not talking about tiny littles ones that employ a few people; I'm talking about foreign multinational tech companies. These are the only companies that will ever "compete with American companies" like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft.

If your senator is a democrat tell them how much wages have not went up and how job ads actually state "H1B1 rates in salary and how employers are abusing the system as it was designed to only allow an employer to hire someone at a comparative rate. Never as a way to lower costs.

If your senator is a republican tell them it is an assault on the free market as employers get to choose where to hire, but you do not have the choice to do the same. Mention government interference and tax dollars wasted, then close with the same line I had above in your own words how it is not going as intended.

Also, mention one of the organizations was a fraudalent fake one by Microsoft looking for cheaper workers. Not an actualy organization of I.T. professionals who are lobbying for this as this is self centered and not in the will of your constitutions. Call them too as the staff checks the amount of calls everday and a spike is certainly noticed by the senator.

Remember the DMCA 2.0 law requiring DRM TCPA chips in every computer sold? It was thrown out after we at slashdot put down such links. Senators got so much of an earfull that was cancelled. Slashdot generates 10,000 if not 100,000 of views for stories. So spend 3 minutes and do your part.

They've no fixed value like $100k, but must prove they're paying more than the average pay for that job. It works extremely well, a shockingly huge proportion of Swiss residents are foreigners. In effect, if a Swiss company wants anybody in the world they know exactly what they need to do to hire them, no bullshit, just prove you want them by paying them more.

Amusingly, the Swiss immigration law exists at three levels, federal, canton, and local, so theoretically you might encounter really messy local imm

Won't that be the irony. H1B visas because there are not enough qualified Americans to work those jobs. But I wager, they'll make it so that Americans can't use the site to apply for those very same jobs.

Sure, but it won't do you any good. Any self-respecting company has legal staff that's seen the "How to not hire an American" video.

Interestingly, you can get links to that video from either DailyKos [dailykos.com] or Free Republic [freerepublic.com] (actually the first two sites in a search) so you can see that the outrage covers a pretty broad part of the political spectrum. Not that our congress cares - we're just the @#%#^! voters and citizens of this country.

There are very strict rules about advertising in USA and demonstrate that there are no qualified Americans for the job before the employer gets an H1B. The pay should be in par with smiliar skill levels, You can not tailor the requirement to fit a candidate you have in mind or the candidate who is already working for you (in practical training).

Having said that, many companies find ways to work around this and there are lawyers who specilize in crafting the requirements that pass the muster with the govern

It will require the U.S. Labor Dept. to create a website of H-1B job openings that employers must post to. The jobs must be posted least 30 calendar days before hiring an H-1B applicant to fill that position. The bill also raises wages for H-1B workers to make them more competitive, although the amount wasn't specified.

Pure window dressing. Is there anyone dumb enough to think this will make a difference? The H-1B has had various "comparable wages" and "no American worker available" provisions for years. It's meaningless because it's never enforced, and I don't expect any magic pixie dust in this bill to change that.

One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce.

This may actually have some effect, but it's frightening to say that. A crackdown means limiting it to 50% of a company's U.S. workforce? U.S. does mean United States, right?

crackdown means limiting it to 50% of a company's U.S. workforce? U.S. does mean United States, right?

That will break the model of the current evil consulting firms that exist only to abuse H-1B workers, and have no US citizens employed at all (at the coder level), while having little effect on legitimate firms supplanting their workforce with a few H-1Bs. It's a very cool idea IMO.

This is a HUGE blessing. I have been working for a company that uses an offshore outsourcer for quite a few years. They suck the brains of the "re-badged" US employees, then let them go, then bring in kids from offshore to perform their jobs. This needs to stop./sorry, but bitter.//seen too many good people lose their jobs then be replaced by people with no experience.///this isn't enough.

I came in as F1, got a H1B, got green card and got citizenship just in time to vote against Rick Santorum. Hip hip hurrey!

But how did your salary compare to that of your American colleagues while you were an H1B employee? H1Bs are not bad because on one ever stays in US, but because it allows for worker exploitation/underpayment (while on H1B).

H1Bs get paid good salaries in tech firms, actually, on par with what the native employees are paid - at least based on my anecdotal evidence (as an H1B with plenty of friends on the same). Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook all do that, and they also start green card applications for their H1Bs as soon as they become eligible - which wouldn't really make much sense if the purpose was to exploit the dependent status. Most people which do this see it as an immigration track towards eventual citizenship, and start settling down almost right away - some don't even wait for a green card to get a home mortgage etc.

The places that are really abusing the program hard seem to be the "business consulting" sweatshops like Tata, for whom outsourcing is, essentially, the entire business model and their raison d'etre. Those tend to have predominantly Indian employees, who are not sponsored for green cards, and who are considerably underpaid. Also, since those employees know that they won't remain in the country in the end, they tend to spend money less and save it more, since it will have more purchasing power for them once they return to their home country (so they aren't as invested in US economy, further exacerbating the effects).

Consequently, the obvious solution to this problem would be to ditch H1B as a temp. worker visa, and remake it as a work-towards-citizenship program. This would imply that any person coming to the country on such a visa would has to apply for a green card; and make this process easier and reduce the current (5.5 years and growing!) backlog. It would also be nice to make it easier to switch jobs while still on H1B (I'd say get rid of it entirely, except that you want to ensure that new job has the necessary qualifications - i.e. above prevailing wage, local applicants prioritized etc); most importantly, make it so that changing jobs doesn't reset the green card process, so that employers can't use it as a stick.

One of the big things this should allow is more people following your path to citizenship. I think one of the things Americans dislike about the H1B visa program are the number of people who don't stay, or have companies that make it difficult to obtain citizenship without having the companies boot on there necks.

Just look at the GAO report on the issue. The largest employers of H1B visa workers are staffing firms. Quite a few of which use the H1B as a job training visa. Then they ca

Yeah, I see a white guy standing in a crowd of filth which probably means now you stink as bad they do. Congrats on being a traitor to your country. It was good of you to post that photo so we know exactly what you look like. After the day the people decide wipe the shit stains off our land, we'll turn their attention to those like you who betrayed their race, for special treatment.

What the fuck? I thought this was a site of thinkers, geeks, not of xenophobic extremists.

Rather than waste time on a lengthy post (I am at work) let me just make one simple point...

100% of H1-B workers that I know wish they could live, work, and pay taxes here. The only issue I take with H1-b is the treatment of said workers. This is a country that once prided itself on harboring the best and brightest from around the world, giving them shelter and refuge in exchange for their knowledge and experience. Now we give them nothing for that.

I thought this was a site of thinkers, geeks, not of xenophobic extremists.

Unfortunately you can find those idiots anywhere.

The only issue I take with H1-b is the treatment of said workers. This is a country that once prided itself on harboring the best and brightest from around the world, giving them shelter and refuge in exchange for their knowledge and experience. Now we give them nothing for that.

If we give them nothing, then why do they come here?

As far as your other points, you're going too far in playing up the myth of American immigration. First, the vast majority of H-1B's are not the "best and brightest". They may be competent, and reasonably well educated, but that doesn't put one in the "best and brightest" category. I'm good at what I do, but I'm not in that category.

Moreover, "shelter and refuge" are what you give refugees, not hi-tech g

Check your hiring process. I've run into times when we can't find anyone because all the candidates HR sent us were unsuitable (the ones we interviewed flunked on the basic C/C++ skills test despite claiming a minimum of 5 years experience coding in C/C++), and yet I knew there were at least 2 highly-qualified candidates that HR hadn't sent to us to review because I handed their resumes to HR myself. That right there tells me that the problem might be not that there aren't any candidates but that HR's throwing them out before they ever get looked at. Ditto for recruiters, who probably use the same process HR does to screen candidates.

I've thought it might be amusing to bypass the HR process entirely, task some of the developers with attending the various techie get-togethers around town and collect qualified candidates that way, then give the hiring manager their resumes directly in addition to sending them to HR. Then if their resumes don't show up, the hiring manager can send them up from his side asking "This candidate looks qualified and we'd like to interview them but they weren't in the stack you sent down. I know it should be there, I had one of my devs run it over to you personally. Can you get back to me about what happened to it?".

Yup, I'd lay a lot of the blame for unemployed developers and companies that can't find people on the desks of HR departments around the country. They're very good at finding people who are good at gaming their system by loading their resumes up with buzz words. When you go to interview those candidates, they can never answer even the most basic questions about anything they put on their resume. Meanwhile, people whose resumes you hand to HR yourself tell you they never heard from your company. If you want

I've thought it might be amusing to bypass the HR process entirely, task some of the developers with attending the various techie get-togethers around town and collect qualified candidates that way, then give the hiring manager their resumes directly in addition to sending them to HR.

I thought this was normal practice in a job search. The best chance of getting past HR is to send it to an employee at the company, no matter how vaguely you know them. There is sometimes a finder's fee to the employee if you get in, which gives them more of an incentive to follow through.

HR is crap. I think the chances have been low for a while that a human actually sees it before a keyword matching process rejects it, no matter how closely the resume matches the job description.

We are trying to hire Java developers in Chicago for a salary range of 80k-120k and NOTHING. H1-B or not. The market is very tight.

Maybe the problem is that you're trying to hire "Java developers" instead of good programmers. That's a mentality that seems to have become pervasive. There was a time when people would be embarrassed to say they were looking for a "language X developer". I once interviewed at a place where the interviewer started to ask me about a specific language. Then he stopped himself right in the middle and said "sorry, stupid question".

Can't find somebody who knows your language du jour? Hire any decent programmer on a probationary basis. If they're not up to speed on the flavor-of-the-year in a month or two, then get rid of them. If you're not willing to invest or chance a month or two then you're not in serious need.

I've been doing Java for quite a few years and would like to do something different. I'm finding that employers are looking for specific languages and I'm having trouble getting considered for any job that isn't Java. The differences between object-oriented procedural languages aren't that great and my resume shows that I've learned quite a few different languages. It's pretty frustrating not being considered for jobs that look interesting just because they use a different language.

I've gathered that language specific crap has gotten popular, judging from the number of "Java developer" or "C# developer" ads I see. It's ridiculous. No programmer worth his salt should have any trouble learning a new language. Pardon the old fart story, but I actually go back to a time before C was the programmer's lingua franca. I'd just learned the language, and was involved in hiring about a half dozen people for a new project that was going to use it. Not a one of our new hires knew it, and we really

I think the issue isn't that they're seeking "Java developers' as in someone who knows basic Java, but more in that they're seeking someone who knows basic Java plus all the frameworks and related stuff (EJBs, JSPs, Spring, Struts, Hibernate, Ant, JUnit, GWT, etc.). It will take more than a few months to get fluent in all of these.

They want somebody who knows all the frameworks and related stuff? Good luck. More likely they need someone to work with one or two that they use in house. Yes, it raises the learning curve, but if you're serious about needing people, you'll live with that.

For those of us who are currently looking would you care to share where these positions are posted?

The big issue I've noticed is that getting past HR is impossible because they are looking for key words to filter based on. You could literally replace them with a computer and get better results. The person filtering needs to understand that if you have one year in Java and 6 years with C++ and another 3 with C# that you are have significantly more value then the two or three years of java that they

Tie H1B visas to the local tech unemployment rate and average salary rate for a given field. Don't allow any more H1B visas into a given metropolitan area until average salaries have gone up and average unemployment has gone down. If there is really a shortage than the market will respond by increasing salaries and decreasing unemployment, let the market do it's work. That would get rid of the bogus job ads that are placed for the explicit purpose of not hiring an American.

Tie H1B visas to the local tech unemployment rate and average salary rate for a given field.

Better yet, just get rid of it. We did fine as the world's tech leader without it for decades. For truly exceptional people there are always things like the 'O' series visas. People have become so brainwashed by the long existence of this program and the constant cries of "shortage" that they seem to think it serves some reasonable purpose. It doesn't.

Now to address some of the needs of the employers.

The employers have no special needs in this regard. Again, they did fine without it for decades. Amazing, isn't it?

Where, exactly, are these alleged companies that supposedly save millions of dollars by hiring H1B workers? I've worked for 3 very, very large corporations in the telecommunications and banking industries that hire H1B workers, and as far as anybody could tell, our H1B coworkers got paid the same amount as everyone else, and actually cost *more* for the company to hire and employ due to greater paperwork requirements.

In most cases, the H1B employees were Indians who went to college (or grad school) in the US, found India's corporate culture to be soul-crushing and demoralizing (regardless of pay), and were denied permanent visas by our dysfunctional immigration system that's almost neurotically-obsessed with family reunification over "twenty/thirtysomething guy who'd view his family's distance and inability to come join him in the US as a perk and bonus".

We should phase out most of the H1B program, and replace it with a policy that makes it relatively easy for single young American-educated prospective immigrants who are unencumbered by wives, kids, and extended families to become permanent residents, then citizens.

Where, exactly, are these alleged companies that supposedly save millions of dollars by hiring H1B workers? I've worked for 3 very, very large corporations in the telecommunications and banking industries that hire H1B workers, and as far as anybody could tell, our H1B coworkers got paid the same amount as everyone else, and actually cost *more* for the company to hire and employ due to greater paperwork requirements.

That's because you're working for legitimate companies. There are also companies full of fresh-from-college hires that pay far under going rate and lie to their employees egregiously about the immigration process and how easy it is to change jobs with an H-1B. Taking advantage of people young enough not to know any better isn't an "immigrant" thing, however. My first full time programming job paid $18k - as a US citizen in a big city! I think there's a false belief that it's somehow only the H-1B consulting shops that abuse their employees to pay them nothing - that's just not visa-specific!

From TFS:

One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce

That would be a huge change for the better - exactly because it would break the current model of the companies that exist just to abuse the system. Sure, in 5-10 years they'll have a new model, just as abusive, but that will be a good 5-10 years!

I am saying this as an American, as one who have funded many startups in America, and as one who have providing jobs to many of my fellow Americans

What America needs are people who are entrepreneurial, who are risk takers, who provide jobs for others

What this bill intends to do is to import even more tech-grunts under the H1-B visas, and to open up the gate for MILLIONS of undocumented aliens, most of them unskilled/low-skilled, lacking in enthusiasm to compete, and they will end up burdening the already over-burdened social welfare system that we have in our country

Care to explain how allowing up to 180k documented workers translates into MILLIONS of undocumented workers? They all have papers. They're also not going to multiply like tribbles, so what are you talking about?

If you read through the 1,500 page immigration bill, you'll understand. Tip: He's not talking about India, he's talking about Mexico and the rest of Central America. Look at the rhetoric and the results of the 60s era immigration reform and the 86 era amnesty.

But that has nothing to do with H1B. H1B foreigners are actually exactly the opposite of those illegal immigrants. They have papers, they have a usable skill set and immigration knows pretty well where they sit around.

What this bill intends to do is to import even more tech-grunts under the H1-B visas, and to open up the gate for MILLIONS of undocumented aliens, most of them unskilled/low-skilled, lacking in enthusiasm to compete, and they will end up burdening the already over-burdened social welfare system that we have in our country

What nonsense? Agreed H1 B employees are evil - but how are they 'undocumented aliens' and burden your social welfare system?

What America, no, the world simply needs is that work has to pay. Simple as that. The good ol' American Dream has to work again. Get a job, work your way up, take a risk or two, work some more and you'll have the chance to play up in the heavens as well.

As long as it's more profitable to push money around and play the stock roulette (where, unlike entrepreneurial minded people who HAVE to risk it all, you play with a bailout net below you), this country (as any country, don't feel left out, Europe!) will never get back on its feet.

One provision that will affect India, in particular, limits H-1B visa use to 50% of a firm's U.S. workforce

That would be a huge change for the better - exactly because it would break the current model of the companies that exist just to abuse the system. Sure, in 5-10 years they'll have a new model, just as abusive, but that will be a good 5-10 years!

I doubt it will take 5-10 years. It's just corporate structure. They'll create partner relationships with other companies. The whole contracting business, and H1Bs in particular, are about having employees you pretend aren't employees. Now they'll have to join some labor intensive companies to get US head count up. Eazy peazy.

There's a "prevailing wage" crap - H1Bs can't be payed less than that. Except that there are tons of ways to game it and the "prevailing" wage is not that prevailing.

As a highly paid worker on H1B, I totally support this law. It fixes major problems with US immigration system (H1B lottery - seriously?) and institutes point-based system to sieve candidates based on real needs.

Not to mention that "prevailing wage" ain't what it used to be. I was offered a job in the US. I laughed when they mentioned what they're willing to pay. If that's the prevailing wage and you don't even get the social package included in that, you may keep your jobs!